Jeff Carlson - Plague Zone

Caruso was shouting into a phone. Deborah couldn’t make out what he was saying. There were too many voices and a bronze-skinned woman at Deborah’s side was particularly strident, cupping her hand over the microphone stem of her headset. “Nà me, n y shì zài bào gào n de j dì de wen yì ma?” the woman said.

She was Chinese, Deborah realized, though her family might have been in America for generations. What must it have been like to wear an Asian face during the war?

The people in this row were translators or diplomats. Many of them were in civilian clothes, although this woman wore Army fatigues. Deborah glanced at her computer screen. It was an overlapping mess of open windows. From what Deborah could see, she had personnel files on Chinese nationals.

“W mén zài w mén de wèi xng shàng méi yu kàn dào rèn hé j xiàng,” the woman continued without inflection. She was loud but very calm, sounding neither angry nor frightened.

“Commandant, pouvez-vous faire décoller ces avions?” a man said in French. Deborah also heard Spanish, but the bulk of the chatter was in Mandarin. Was that significant?

“W xiàn zài gào sù n, w mén de wèi xng tú xiàng xin shì n de j dì wèi shòu yng xing,” the woman said as Deborah hesitated. Then she saw the Air Force captain gesture impatiently.

Deborah pushed into the clusters of people, patting at their shoulders or backs to make them aware of her. One man spoke Italian. The lilting flow of it made her think of Gustavo and his funny grin, but there wasn’t time to remember more. She’d made sense of the clatter of keyboards all around her. Each of the translators was paired with another person who transcribed their conversation into English, typing furiously. Some of the transcribers also muttered into their own headsets. They were collating data from all over the command center… and sending it where?

As she watched, one man stood up and pointed at the next row as if following an e-mail or a few words, making sure he gained another soldier’s attention. They were funneling information to one station, where other staffers were using that data to correct and maintain their situation maps. Deborah looked at the main display again, where occupied California was still densely packed with blinking symbols. The enemy seemed unaffected by the plague.

“W mén xyào lián xì zhèng f què rèn shì fu x yào zu ò ch fn yìng,” a man said in Mandarin, as another shouted, “Still nothing from Two Echo Two, sir!”

Deborah reached the knot surrounding the general. Another officer touched Caruso’s shoulder. He glanced back and forth among them, settled on Deborah, and said to the phone, “I will disregard those orders unless the secretary himself tells me otherwise. We’ve already waited too long.”

Her skin crawled with awe and dread at the reptilian focus in Caruso’s eyes. He had become one of the few remaining heads of state in allied North America. The weight on his soul must have been crushing, and yet that pressure was exactly what he’d trained for.

He didn’t like what he heard. “If your compound has been breached, I am in command,” he said. “Is the secretary alive?” Then: “Two minutes.” He passed the handset to a Navy officer seated nearby and said, “Keep them on the line. Give me the phone again in ninety seconds.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Major Reece,” he said, his jaw barely moving. Muscles bulged in his cheeks.

“Sir.” Deborah’s back was ramrod straight.

“Has she seen the photos?” Caruso asked, and another officer said, “I’m sorry, General. No. Over here.” He tugged at Deborah’s arm and she bent to look at one of the many computer screens.

Behind her, Caruso said, “Who else do we have online at Peterson?”

The other officer clicked through several windows and brought up two still photos. A white man. A dark woman. These pictures were grainy compared to the rest of the images in the room and Deborah thought, distantly, that both stills must have been pulled from security cameras. It was hard to think, because she felt as if she’d been shot.

The faces in the photos were full of the plague’s staring confusion. Their pupils were distorted and the man’s head hung sideways on his neck, his mouth slanting open.

But they’re supposed to be okay! Deborah thought.

All of the complexes in Grand Lake were set apart from each other because they’d been built at different times and because it had been thought best to spread their assets. Complex 3 was also specially retrofitted to make sure it was airtight because they believed it might become dangerous. Three was where Grand Lake maintained their nanotech labs. Those people should have been able to keep the new plague out as perfectly as they kept their own experiments inside.

The woman was Meghna Katechia, an Indian national who became the head of Grand Lake’s weapons program after the war. The man was Steve McCown, Katechia’s top assistant, who had worked with Ruth Goldman herself for a time.

“Can you confirm—” the officer began.

“Steve McCown and Meghna Katechia,” Deborah said. “Where are the others? Did we get out Laury or Aaron?”

“No. We think one of the civilians panicked and tried to run for it. Complex 3 was a total loss.”

In the next row, a translator bolted upright from her desk and shouted, “Sir! General Caruso, sir! I have a Russian field general calling on all frequencies for assistance from U.S. forces! He’s reporting widespread infections in California and says he’s also been cut off from mainland Russia!”

“Jesus Christ,” the Navy officer muttered, but Caruso turned to an Army colonel and said, “Get on that, John.” He waved to another man and called, “Where are our satellites?”

A double cross? Deborah wondered. The Chinese are attacking their friends, too. Why?

“I think he’s telling the truth, sir!” the translator shouted as the colonel pressed into the crowd to reach him, calling new orders to the entire group.

“Press the Europeans again,” the colonel said. “What do they know?”

Caruso turned back to Deborah. “Can you help us if we get some equipment out of the labs?” he asked.

“Sir?”

“If we can’t decontaminate the gear, we’ll put you in a suit and bring everything to a safe room. I’m willing to send men out there if you think you have any chance of giving us some information on this nanotech. Anything at all.”

Deborah stammered. “I — Sir.” She didn’t want to fail him, but she couldn’t lie. “I’m a physician. My involvement with the nanotech programs was negligible at best.”

“You know more than anyone else I’ve got,” Caruso said.

“General, I have the 35 on the phone again!” the Navy officer called, holding out a handset.

Caruso kept his eyes on Deborah. “You know how to operate their microscopes,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I’m sending a team to recover what we can.” Caruso gestured to two officers nearby. Both of them nodded. One picked up a phone. Without wasting another moment, Caruso pressed his own handset to his ear and said, “This is A6.”

He listened only an instant before his mouth twisted.

“Every minute there is more and more evidence that we know exactly where the nanotech originated,” he said. “Goldman was right.”

Ruth? Deborah thought. She’s alive!

More than that, it sounded as though Ruth was working on their side again, which made Deborah happier than she would have expected.

“Where is the secretary?” Caruso asked. “If he cannot personally verify his whereabouts, I am in command.” Then: “I am in command.” He pointed to an officer seated at the computers and said, “Emergency action message. Authenticate our status as Kaleidoscope.”